What Does Room Temperature Have to Do With Purchasing a Bed?

Does the temperature in your bedroom affect your mattress?

The answer is yes “more than you might think!” Most people never give any thought to what room temperature has to do with your next mattress purchase. At STL Beds we have had issues raised by not only our customer but the customers of our competitors. So today we will address some of the common ones.

One of the most common is by waterbed owners that claim their waterbed heater is not working even a week or more after having it professionally installed. After some thorough questioning and in some cases actually going out to the home we have found a common thread, a bed is located in a room with little or no heat! More true than ever with the evolvement down to a 300 watt waterbed heater, now more than ever the heaters do not have the capabilities to heat a king size waterbed barely covered in a 50 degree room. The remedy we suggest piling on the blankets, sheets, or a insulated mattress pad. That should do the trick and save you lots of money on your energy bill.

Now that you have been warned about temperature and mattresses we would like to talk about memory foam mattresses in very cold spaces. If you do this expect that if the temperature dips into the freezing temperatures you will have a solid frozen brick of foam. Memory foam is heat reactive. It responds to your body heat as well as room temperature. We can tell you numerous stories where people have put memory foam or visco foam in an unheated guesthouse, truck sleeper cabs, RV’s or a cool or cold basement only to find that the mattress would either freeze or get considerably firmer if not kept properly heated. It’s true a memory foam mattress can become rock hard at 30 degrees and take over a day to warm to sleep temperature so if you buy memory foam mattresses and take it home only to find it does not feel exactly like it did at the store you may be right. If your bedroom is 20 degrees cooler than the mattress showrooms give your mattress salesmen a break. Don’t call the memory foam mattress dealer and tell him he sent the wrong mattress. Your cool or cold bedroom is most likely the culprit.

When it comes to the typical mattress and boxspring we have not seen this to be a problem unless the mattress is built using a large amount of temperature sensitive memory foam in them. However we have not only read about but experienced some complaints about airbeds being cold. These too were in bedrooms with very low room temperatures. So the next time you go mattress shopping you may want to consider room temperature when making your next mattress selection.

Author: Douglas Belleville

Doug Belleville and his father Dave own and run STLBeds - a specialty sleep store located in Arnold, MO. The staff at STLBeds is highly educated about sleep, comfort and their special sleep products. STLBeds only carries high quality mattresses and bed-related products. You won't find the brand names here - click here to find out why!

4 Comments

i bought a memory foam mattress top to ues in my pop up camper
can i leave the memory foam in place while being stored for the
winter? i want to make sure i wont damage the foam because of the cold
thank you

I am not aware of any issues related to this. However if it was vacuum packed and left that way for an extended period of time permanent damage to the foam may result. You will want to verify specific issues by contacting the manufacturer or the retailer that sold you your memory foam mattress. This information can either be found on your purchase receipt or on the law label of your mattress.

My overinsulated geothermal controlled house is capped at 70 degrees in the winter for heat. All the rooms stay the same. All vents are serviced monthly. The issue I have is that the air drops to 56 degrees at night & is lucky to get to 67 during the daytime. I have a Costco special fabric coated air bed with a 4” memory foam topper. Could the air bed & topper be causing the drastic temp drop. It’s only happening in the room where the air bed is located.

Hannele, I have NEVER heard of this problem before. Sounds like an insulation issue in that part of the house to me. I very much doubt putting an air bed in the room would be the cause. A giant ice cube perhaps yes 😉 but science and engineering are not my forte. I am in mattress sales. Hopefully one of our readers will stumble upon this question. I would contact the manufacturer of the airbed and see if they have ever heard of this issue before. Good luck, let us know how you resolve it. Good Luck Doug